Feeling inspired by Raid's recent Rimworld LP, and as I've been sucked into this yet again, I thought I'd combine the two.

My idea is to rename my mercs and new recruits after forum members, and see how far I get before the lot of them are horribly murdered and mutilated by goblins and zombies. A full party is 12-strong, though it will take a while to get there, so if anyone is interested in appearing in what is almost certainly going to be a horrific waste of life, put your name up in here.

I'm hoping at least a few will step bravely forward, and when I've got a few names I'll get started.

I'll probably do what Raid did as well and have an imgur gallery as I go, as when I did my Neo Scavenger LP last year (?) it nearly finished me off posting all those pics on the forum.

FYI I don't plan to have this many images in other installments, I just felt for the first one a bit of introduction and more detailed look at some of the mechanics and tactical view for the battles was merited.

Also, if anyone's interested in the game itself, how it works and so on, shout with any questions and I'll do my best to answer

katarn wrote:Is the turnbased combat as you'd expect? Action points to do different stuff, use different skills, etc?

In a nutshell, the weapons give a merc access to particular skills - 1 is usually a basic hit, then a hatchet would give a 2 skill of hacking a shield (bigger, better axes do more damage to shields, so while a hatchet will take a few hits to hack through a basic shield, a greataxe will smash it in one go). A spear's 2 skill attacks anyone entering its zone of control, a club's 2 skill is a stun, and so on.

It means you can switch weapons between merc's pretty easily to see which you like most, though the best approach is to have a variety on the field, and when you eventually get rich enough you'll keep different ones in stock so you can better meet the tactical needs of an enemy (eg hammers are excellent against skeletons, etc).

What you do is level up either their melee or ranged skill (you don't have to, but it is highly advisable - you get to increase 3 of about 8 different skills each level-up), and after about five level ups you can specialise in a particular weapon if you like for some additional bonuses.

On the field, the vast majority of the time you will enter combat in the formation your guys are in on the inventory pane, so you can be tactical there (at a basic level, melee guys in the front, ranged and polearm guys - who can attack over 2 hexes - in the back). Each combatant gets 9 Action Points (AP) per turn. Movement costs AP, and the terrain and some perks you can gain affect how much. Weapon skills also use varying amounts of AP, while you can also defer your turn either before or after spending any AP. You can also spend it in any order, so you can move then attack, or attack and move, generally you can attack twice if you don't move.

You and enemies have a one-hex wide zone of control around their character. If an enemy enters your zone, or vice versa, you're locked in until one of you is dead. You can try to move, which gives your opponent a free swing at you, which can get very bad very quickly. There are a couple of perks you can buy to either get out of an enemy's zone without penalty, or switch positions with an adjacent ally.

Essentially, battles play out a bit like a chess match - it's about trying to gain advantage through good positioning, or height (if you're on a higher tile it increases your defence and increases chance to hit enemies), or, ideally, both. The mechanics are pretty simple in practice, but rewards strategic thinking... all of which can be immediately undone by RNG, very much like XCOM.

I find it very hard to put down, one of those just-one-more-turn games!